Magnum Opus
by Irascent Lotus
Summary: Tiedoll had always told him that, if he tried, he could become one of the best artists in the world - he just had to practice. As such, the boy had set out to find the medium that suited him best. And there it was, in plain sight, hidden amongst the colours he'd seen day-to-day. It was time to draw, to paint; it was time to create his magnum opus. [warning: character death.]


**A/N:** D. Gray-Man/Kanda Yuu/Froi Tiedoll do not belong to me - all rights reserved to the wonderful Katsura Hoshino. The character death can be taken as you will - temporary or permanent - I myself couldn't decide. Hope you enjoy!

* * *

There was colour. There was so much colour, even as the world switched from dim to bright and back again in an erratic rhythm that matched his breathing. His diaphragm pulsated to the constantly changing visions, almost as though it were the switch to bring about such vivid expulsions of multiple hues from what lay above him.

He wondered, perhaps, did this come from him? Was it his doing? Did he make the world become dark, and then bright yet again, with just an inhale or an exhale? Was it the fault of his own?

The sky was so beautiful today, he realized numbly, as an inhale unlocked the blurred windows and forced them open to reveal that eternal expanse of blue, lacking in those pure white clouds that sometimes danced along it like puppets on a string. The sun, as bright as always, shone down with its welcoming light so as to, unbidden, warm his body. It soaked into his black clothing, his black hair, and struck deep into his pale flesh, heating him even as he grew cold.

Yet, for all of the green, blue, and gold that greeted him from the sky and the earth, from the sun and the grass and the trees [there had been trees, had they all fallen? he couldn't tell] there was a colour that stood out in more stark contrast. It soaked up everything, soaked its way through, took the vivid hues and darkened them past the point of recognition.

**Red.**

It soaked and leeched, added and took away from, pooled and glistened and crept along as though it were a blanket of death. A stained hand was lifted from a similarly-ruined patch of grass, the palm facing towards the ever-welcoming sky above as that colour licked and dripped its way down his wrist, his forearm, and his knuckles. They were twisting, rolling like beads of destruction even as they soaked into his already-sodden sleeve and fell like gruesome rain upon his stained visage, both adding to and taking away from the greying pallor that settled within his pale flesh.

With each inhale, the flow ebbed; and each exhale brought the tide back in, rolling along the folds of his clothes and the dips and tears in his tortured skin like waves crashing upon the sandy shoreline of a coast. He was near a coast, wasn't he? He'd been high in the sky, that welcoming sky, surrounded and contained and embraced by that glorious blue and he'd seen it; he'd seen the water, the waves, the sparkling brightness of reflected sunlight. He'd seen it before he'd been sent towards the unforgiving earth, made up of its own brightness; he'd fallen like an angel without its wings, landing amongst the green, the gold, the pink and purple and mahogany and red, _red_-

There was so much colour. There was so much _red_.

It stood out in stark contrast against obsidian, against pure white, and grey. It mottled the earth, it fought against the blue, against the warmth, and acted as a cold blanket as it leeched life, leeched love, leeched everything from him and left him cold, dying, _god_ it was so cold, had even the sun given up on him-

Red was his favourite colour.

It was bright, it was warm; a display of passion and anger, of love and vehemence, good and bad, restoration and destruction and it was like a pure liquid that flowed from every crevice, every nook and showered the world with its burning glory. He liked red - he loved it. It burnt with a fire that he himself could not display anywhere but the battlefield at risk of leaving himself wide open, flaying off his protective layers and putting forth his ultimate vulnerability.

An exhale shut the windows again, dimming the colours and the warmth.

Yet, somehow, a new colour showed itself; not a visible one, no. An audible one. A voice, roughened with age and slick with fear, met his ears as clear as the ringing of a hammer against a bell. It melted his exteriors, melted away the [still-growing, why was it growing when the world was getting brighter] blurriness as he lay still, awash in red. The voice poured over him, over his body like cream, like love and care. [and panic, why was he panicking, he was only taking a small nap soon, it was fine, worry about yourself for once]

The voice unlocked something inside of him, and a smile split open the cascade of red like the unveiling of a royal curtain. Perhaps, now, he was an artist, wasn't he? A true artist, as he had told him he could become? His brush was his blade, and his canvas was the world. Each and every body, the ground and the water and trees and _everything_ existed to be painted upon, to be painted with, and as he lay here in his myriad of colours, of broken and shattered hues that were that dreadful mix of saturated and its opposite, he realized he had never felt more like an _artist_.

His dance of death had led to the canvas becoming light, becoming something far more vivid than the greys and whites and shadows that had decorated it before. The splashes and shades of red created a picture that he'd always wanted to show: his dance of death, upon the stage that was the battlefield. Its uneven ground, unstable footing, unworthy match-up - a true display of death, destruction, and with it the colours of life.

Red was life's colour. It flowed through veins, arteries, organs, pumping through the body and out of the body with an unbidden ease, flowing like sheets that rolled upon an autumn breeze. And he had painted with it - painted a crimson canvas of life and death, of battles and victories and losses and everything dangerous and passionate and god, there was so much red.

There was red on the hand that lifted him partially off the ground by his shoulders, there was red on the chest he was rested against. There was red upon his own uniform, upon his flesh, disguising that disgusting grey pallor of consuming death with the slowly drying colours of his fading life.

Clear droplets of an old man's grief fell upon his face, trickling through the red and leaving lines of the past, of only minutes before [or hours, how long had it been, how long had he been laying here?] when his flesh had been free of this colour, free of the growing stain that overtook him. Such was the life of an artist - they could never fully remove the stains of their work from their flesh, from their clothes. Yet, why was he crying? Why was he not examining, even admiring, his work? He wasn't even looking at it.

[don't look at my face, don't look at me, look at what I did - I painted, look at it, please, be proud of me, didn't I do well, I painted from the heart, with my body and mind and soul and don't cry, _please_]

The world blurred and spun, and more of his medium of choice erupted from his parted lips like a bubbling pool of lava.

Warm flowed down his own cheeks, but it wasn't the same warmth - it wasn't the thick blanket of death that was still pooling upon him, around him, creeping around his canvas like a design of his own making. It was warm, and salted, quite unlike the iron of his beloved red.

A sob.

A hand gripped his own, taking on the stain of his paint. Perhaps it was a process of passing on the paintbrush, then, to the next user. But wasn't it supposed to be passed to the apprentice, not the master?

The sky was lit up, painfully bright behind the man who held him half off of the ground - half off of his masterpiece. It was a vast expanse of blue, stretching on endlessly. It was boundless, ungated, uncharted, and reaching out and into him.

"... D... Don't..." The words flowed forth upon the next wave of red, as he prepared to sign his name upon his canvas. "Cry... D..."

He watched those charcoal eyes widen behind partially-fogged lenses, glazed over with still-flowing droplets of purity, of grief and innocence and love.

His broken smile widened. Now was the time for words unspoken, for feelings long since ignored - and they bubbled forth like the red from his paling lips, choppy and disoriented and hard to understand. [but he'd always been hard to understand - he was a furious enigma, and would forever remain as such.]

"D...ad... L... Lo...ve... Y...ou. ... G... Good...b...y...e..."

The signature ended with a whispering note, flicking across the corner of the canvas with a flourishing finale of his own blood and tears.

Kanda Yuu's gloriously crimson magnum opus was finally complete.

[and an old man's tears of pure grief threatened to wash it away with the wind.]


End file.
